A delightful mishmash of waffle about my exciting life, bizarre opinions on the great philosophical matters of our day, and plenty of Zionist ranting for good measure.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

That clash of civilisations

Carefully slipping under the radar of the British media was the result of the centrepiece debate at Mayor Ken's recent London conference on "How To Avoid The Clash Of Civilisations By Blaming The Jews" (ok, I may have amended the title slightly).

As reported in the last posting, Daniel Pipes, evil Zioneoconazi, faced up to the liberal democratic champion Livingstone on his own turf. The results were extraordinary and surprising - the Jews left the building alive, and the neutrals (as if there were any, how naive I am) will have come away enlightened.

"...on Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007, I attended a conference hosted by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, entitled "World Civilization-Clash of Civilizations," to which the eminent American scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes had been invited. During the past year as I have read mind-boggling websites and blogs that refer to Dr Pipes as a ‘Zionist pervert’ and other delightful monikers, I wondered what would happen to this brave man, based in my hometown, Philadelphia, were he to cross the ocean...

...The Mayor rambled about Singapore, where he had traveled for the Olympic bid; he said it was immaculate and crime-free. Perhaps I lost his thread but he observed that one does not have to be a Muslim or Christian to be involved in free choice. The Mayor quoted John Stuart Mill, “live as you wish as long as you do not hurt anyone.” Inasmuch as the conference was held on the Jewish Sabbath, he might have exercised free choice and scheduled the main event with Pipes for a time convenient to observant Jews...

...He concluded by saying that the 'Islamophobic' media in the UK are trying to show that a “lower culture is taking over,” but in fact 90 percent of British Pakistani 16-year-old girls say their parents do expect them not to get married and have children, but instead to have careers. If the media are Islamophobic, how is it that Shami Chakrabarti, Abdel Bari Atwan, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, Dr Azzam 'I want to be a suicide bomber in Israel' Tammimi, Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Ghada Karmi, Rageh Omaar, Asghar Bukhari, the aforementioned Salma Yaqoub, Halima Hussain, Faisal Bodi, Ahdaf Soueif, Tariq Ali, Tariq Ramadan and many others are an integral part of our daily media broadcasts and newsprint in Great Britain? ...

...After Mayor Livinsgtone came Daniel Pipes. His dignity and aplomb were breathtaking. He looked not unlike our British Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, and had the same sort of decorous style of delivery. One could hear a pin drop...

...The Mayor, Pipes noted, "wants everyone to get along" while "I want to defeat a terrible enemy." Multiculturalism, he continued, is breeding radical Islam -- and Britain is becoming a danger to the world: British terrorists have committed terrorist acts in fifteen countries. The biggest threat, from the Pipes perspective, is not from Iraq or Afghanistan but from London (I have been saying this for years and even my neocon friends do not grasp this scenario). What we are talking about is Islamic-flavored totalitarianism...

...Salma Yaqoub got off to a roaring start by announcing that terror attacks such as the July 7, 2005 tube and bus bombings in London were actually "Reprisal events."... Yaqoub said the American plan to re-map the Middle East is a “weapon of mass destruction” and that the neoconservatives pose the biggest threat to civilization...

...Leaning against the podium and addressing his comments in the direction of Salma Yaqoub, (Douglas) Murray asked, “Why are Muslims killing Muslims all over the world? Was Bertrand Delano, the Mayor of Paris not stabbed by a Muslim because he was gay?” Emphasizing the “backward norms of Islam,” Murray reminded the audience that Muslims are being killed by other Muslims if they do not submit to these norms.

A powerful moment unfolded when Murray asked, “How is multiculturalism going in Saudi Arabia?” - which was greeted with laughter and applause. “Are there any synagogues or churches there?” More applause and laughter.

Murray added that there will never, ever be sharia law here in Britain, but that some countries will have it, sadly. He berated the Mayor for inviting the suicide-bomber sympathiser Yusuf al Qaradawi to London and added that one should not roll out a red carpet for such radicals.

Facing Yaqoub, Murray informed the audience that she had been associated with the central Birmingham Mosque, which had featured so prominently in the Channel Four documentary about extremist Imams, including one who says the July 7th London bombings were not perpetrated by Muslims. Murray completed his assault on Yaqoub by reminding the audience that she had been a member of the ‘Yemen 7‘ and was a member of the Respect Party, which supports the insurgency in Iraq...

...Unbelievably, Mayor Livingstone asserted in the question period that Yusuf al Qaradawi was the “strongest force for modernization of Islam - he is the future of Islam.” This would be like saying a drug dealer is the best candidate to run a pharmaceuticals empire. Various hostile audience members asked questions about the ‘Clash of fundamentalisms’ and suggested that Pipes was an advocate of violence...

...In the second session, absurd allegations against the West that absolved Muslim terrorism proliferated. According to Salma Yaqoub, Bin Laden had no military hardware and he and his followers are “resisting legitimately.” She was furious that Douglas Murray had attacked the Muslim Council of Britain and said they were not a barrier to integration. Oh, really? Imagine how well Anglo Jewry is integrating with Muslims when their main governing body boycotts Holocaust Memorial Day...

...A featherweight young man named Denis Fernando, a gay Muslim, accused Rupert Murdoch of being at the helm of Islamophobia along with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the USA. I would love to ask Mr. Fernando how long he would last intact in a Muslim country. He could get a job with a Murdoch company tomorrow and visit the World Bank and IMF without anyone arresting and torturing him. Might he like to try visiting some Muslim countries while sitting on a panel as the leader of a gay and lesbian pressure group?...

...Pipes was trying to illustrate that there are people of Middle eastern descent who would not castrate men like Fernando for being gay. I would like to suggest to Fernando that Daniel Pipes would happily invite him to his home in Philadelphia but that the reverse would not happen in most Muslim countries, as the late Daniel Pearl found out...

...Dr. Abdul Bari made the point that his mosque lives happily next door to a synagogue. But when I was called on to ask why the radicals at my local mosque threatened to kill me, and why our local shopkeeper was antagonizing every resident of my neighborhood by refusing to stock goods that offend Islam, I was heckled and shouted down, and Lee Jasper muttered a joke at my expense...

...It was notable that Abdul Bari could not deal with an audience comment about Iqbal Sacranie’s support for the fatwa against Salman Rushdie in a comment made at City Circle in July 06; he beat around the bush and seemed totally unconcerned when a Jewish audience member said synagogues and Jewish schools now live in fear since the rise of radical Islam in Britain. The man in the audience said that his family had been Londoners for several generations and had lived happily side by side with the non-Jewish community but now had to employ 24-hour security because of the rhetoric being used in many mosques and on UK- generated websites. So much for multiculturalism...

...A Jewish conference delegate, Adrian Cohen, said he had to arrive late because the Mayor had scheduled the day’s events on Shabbat but that he hoped that during the course of the day there had been a discourse on anti-Semitism inasmuch as Jewish schools have to be guarded 24/7. A man shouted, “If you had been here all day you’d have heard it discussed.”

So much for Ken Livingstone’s London. I left feeling offended, confused and deeply, deeply angry. Daniel Pipes was brave to have crossed the ocean to address this crowd, but it is doubtful he changed the minds of the pathologically hate-filled Israel and USA-bashers. In the corridors of the venue were stalls promoting Hugo Chavez and various causes that would fit into Ken Livingstone’s narrow Marxist-redux remit. Heaven forbid there might have been a stall to promote a Jewish charity.

What is so sad is that a mayor of a major world metropolis can so deeply hurt the souls of the Jewish community with his inexcusable pronouncements about their sole nation on earth by rejecting its creation, by bringing as his sidekick a known radical and by scheduling the event to effectively exclude participation by Jewish clergy, communal leaders and community members.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I think, Friends of Efrat is the best Jewish charity around. It simultaneously achieves major religious and political aims. I found it here samsonblinded.org/blog/the-best-jewish-charity.htm and donated that same day which is sort of unusual for me.